OutOfCharacters
Phrourach
In terms of spells on sieges - only the beseiger can cast spells so its not so much heracles its any favor farming - one player has a whole alliance to farm in this situation and i would say that any alliance can set up a system for this. Its a strategy and you cant prevent it except by stopping favor farming.
Once the temple is owned thats different and yes the whole alliance can cast spells - this ability is being looked at so feedback from Sidon would be useful.
I would disagree here as pure favor farming requires time for favor to generate. Removing the Heracles aspect would nerf this enough to make it more reasonable, but any alliance looking to hold Olympus, given the power to cast endless spells on incoming attacks, will use Heracles for infinite favor generation. Everyone attacks Heracles, and the siege holder collects it, negating all of the incoming firepower.
Unlike in WW worlds, where every player does this to boost wonders, this dynamic overpowers a SINGLE player. The LMD was considered an abuse by many (yourself included), because it overpowered ONE player through the backing of that person's alliance. This is the exact same scenario, overpowering a single person through manufactured favor-- not ACTUAL favor generated in the game. This is just like the manufactured morale in sieges that were supported by an entire alliance for LMDs. If this isn't nerfed here, it's hypocritical in terms of allowing this "abuse" to overpower a single player in ways that change the game's outcome through a broken game mechanic, while eliminating similar "abuse" on the LMD front. The only difference here is that the Heracles abuse is more likely to favor the golders who will gold out swords to constantly slam into Heracles.
Olympus is supposed to be hard to hold. That should be part of the strategy needed to figure out how to do it.